are writ with so romantic an air, and allowing for the difference of eastern manners, are yet, upon any supposition that can be made, of so wild and absurd a contrivance (at least to my northern understanding), that I have not only no pleasure, but no patience, in perusing them. They are to me like the odd paintings on Indian screens, which at first glance may surprize and please a little: but, when you fix your eye intently upon them, they appear so extravagant, disproportioned, and monstrous, that they give a ju dicious eye pain, and make him seek for relief from some other object. They may furnish the mind with some new images: but I think the purchase is made at too great an expense for to read those two volumes through, likeing them as little as I do, would be a terrible penance, and to read them with pleasure would be dangerous on the other side, because of the infection. I will never believe, that you have any keen relish of them, till I find you write worse than you do, which I dare say I never shall. Who that Petit de la Croix is, the pretended author of them2, I cannot 2 Not the pretended Author, but the real Translator, of an Arabic MS. in the French King's library. What he has given in ten small Volumes, is not more than the tenth part of the Original. The Eastern people have been always famous for this sort of Tales in which much fine morality is often conveyed; not indeed in a story always representing real life and manners, but what the eastern superstitions have made pass for such amongst the people. Their great genius for this kind of writing appears from what the Translator has here given us - But the policy of some of the latter princes of the East greatly hurt the elegance and use of the composition, by setting all men upon composing in this way, to furnish matter for their coffee-houses and public places of re tell but observing how full they are in the descriptions of dress, furniture, etc. I cannot help thinking them the product of some Woman's imagination: and believe me, I would do any thing but break with you, rather than be bound to read them over with attention. I am sorry that I was so true a prophet in respect of the S. Sea; sorry, I mean, as far as your loss is concerned for in the general I ever was and still am of opinion, that had that project taken root and flourished, it would by degrees have overturned our constitution. Three or four hundred millions was such a weight, that which soever way it had leaned must have borne down all before it-But of the dead we must speak gently; and therefore, as Mr. Dryden says somewhere, Peace be to its Manes! sort; which were enjoined to entertain their customers with a rehearsal of these works, in order to divert them from politics, and matters of state. The collection in question is so strange a medley of sense and nonsense, that one would be tempted to think it the compilation of some coffee-man, who gathered indifferently from good and bad. The contrivance he has invented of tying them together is so blunderingly conducted, that after such an instance of the want of common sense, one can wonder at no absurdity we find in them. The tales are supposed to be told to one of the Kings of Persia of the Dynasty of the Sassanides, an ancient race before Mahomet, and yet the scene of some of them is laid in the Court of Harown Alrascid the 26th Chalif, and the 5th of the Race of the Abasides. These, where the scene is so laid, are amongst the best; and it may be easily accounted for. Alrascid was one of the most magnificent of the Chalifs, and the greatest encourager of Letters; so that it was natural for men of Genius in after-times, to do this honour to his memory.—But the Bishop talks of Petit de la Croix. M. Galland was the translator of the Arabian Tales. The name of the other is to the collection called the Persian Tales, of which I have nothing to say. W. Let me add one reflection, to make you easy in your ill luck. Had you got all that you have lost beyond what you ventured, consider that your superfluous gains would have sprung from the ruin of several families that now want necessaries! A thought, under which a good and good-natured man that grew rich by such means, could not, I persuade myself, be perfectly easy. Adieu, and believe me, ever Your, etc. LETTER VII. FROM THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. March 26, 1721. You are not yourself gladder you are well than I am; especially since I can please myself with the thought that when you had lost your health elsewhere, you recovered it here. May these lodgings never treat you worse, nor you at any time have less reason to be found of them! I thank you for the sight of your3 Verses, and with the freedom of an honest, though perhaps injudicious friend, must tell you, that though I could like some of them, if they were any body's else but yours, yet as they are yours, and to be owned as such, I can scarce like any of them. Not but that the four first lines are good, especially the second couplet; and might, if followed by four others as good, give repu Epitaph on Mr. Harcourt. tation to a writer of a less established fame: but from you I expect something of a more perfect kind, and which the oftener it is read, the more it will be admired. When you barely exceed other writers, you fall much beneath yourself: 'tis your misfortune now to write without a rival, and to be tempted by that means to be more careless, than you would otherwise be in your composures. Thus much I could not forbear saying, though I have a motion of consequence in the House of Lords to-day, and must prepare for it. I am even with you for your ill paper; for I write upon worse, having no other at hand. I wish you the continuance of your health most heartily: and am ever 4 Your, etc. I have sent Dr. Arbuthnot the Latin MS. which I could not find when you left me; and I am so angry at the writer for his design, and his manner of executing it, that I could hardly forbear sending him a line of Virgil along with it. The chief Reasoner of that philosophic farce is a Gallo-Ligur, as he is Written by Huetius, Bishop of Avranches. He was a mean reasoner; as may be seen by a vast collection of fanciful and extravagant conjectures, which he called a Demonstration; mixed up with much reading, which his friends called Learning; and delivered (by the allowance of all) in good Latin. This not being received for what he would give it, he composed a treatise Of the Weakness of the Human Understanding: a poor system of scepticism; indeed little other than an abstract of Sextus Empiricus. W. A much more useful undertaking was his directing and superintending the Dauphin edition of the Classics. The commentary on his own life is entertaining. called-what that means in English or French, I can't say--but all he says, is in so loose and slippery and trickish a way of reasoning, that I could not forbear applying the passage of Virgil to him, Vane Ligus, frustraque animis elate superbis! To be serious, I hate to see a book gravely written, and in all the forms of argumentation, which proves nothing, and which says nothing; and endeavours only to put us into a way of distrusting our own faculties, and doubting whether the marks of truth and falsehood can in any case be distinguished from each other. Could that blessed point be made out (as it is a contradiction in terms to say it can), we should then be in the most uncomfortable and wretched state in the world; and I would in that case be glad to exchange my Reason, with a dog for his Instinct, to-morrow. LETTER VIII. L. CHANCELLOR HARCOURT TO MR. POPE. December 6, 1722. I CANNOT but suspect myself of being very unreasonable in begging you once more to review the inclosed. Your friendship draws this trouble on you. I may freely own to you, that my tenderness makes me exceeding hard to be satisfied with any thing which can be said on such an unhappy subject. caused the Latin Epitaph to be as often altered before I could approve it. I |